Despite Everything, It's Still You

by Josie/Jocelyn Deane
after Toby Fox

You use various pronouns to observe
if it changes. What leaps forward wholly
formed from your face. You, still
as you recognise/have been
recognised as, if only from sharing
the room together, so long, the prick
of the spindle of your eye, a realistic
shade on the wall, disappearing with your
gaze—  your body’s
passport stamps: your voice suddenly
English, blessedly not, your surprising
waist and then, on cue, ingrown chest hair as
you shave it. Signifiers you can ignore
in aggregate. You, still
as you have hoped, behind the curtain,
disappearing like a fox in the underbrush and
thicket of you, still as you recognise
like a birdcall in late winter, the filaments
of green, thrumming
just below the surface, still as you
recognise, still. 

Josie/Jocelyn Deane is a writer/student at the university of Melbourne. Their work has appeared in Cordite, Southerly, Australian Poetry and Overland, among others. They were one of the recipients of the 2013 457 visa poetry/ shortlisted for the 2015 Marsden and Hachette prize for poetry. They live on unceded Wurundjeri land.